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THE 

CLERGY KESERVE QUESTION 

IN 

CANADA. 



BY 

A. N. BETH UN E, D.D. 

ARCHDEACON OF YORK, DIOCESE OF TORONTO, CANADA. 



LONDON : 

PRINTED BY E. CLAY, BREAD STREET HILL. 
18.53. 



THE 

CLERGY RESERVES IN CANADA. 



When the Province of Canada was conquered by 
the British forces about a century ago, its population 
was exclusively French, and its religion fully esta- 
blished under the Roman Catholic form. They 
possessed ample endowments for the maintenance 
both of religion and education ; and, in accordance 
with the rules of an Establishment, tithes were 
enforced, and they are to this day paid by members 
of that communion in Lower Canada. 

After the conquest, there was gradually an intro- 
duction of settlers of British origin ; and at the 
conclusion of the revolutionary war which terminated 
in the independence of the United States of America, 
the loyalists who abandoned that country were en- 
couraged to settle in the more westerly portions of 
the conquered province. In the year 1791, it was 
considered expedient to divide the province into 
Lower and Upper Canada, as their respective popu- 
lations had become so diverse in language, customs, 
and creed. In framing the new Constitution conse- 
quent upon this division of the province, it was not 
forgotten that, as an ample provision existed for the 
a 2 



4 



maintenance of the Roman Catholic faith in Lower 
Canada, some corresponding support should be se- 
cured for the Protestant religion in Upper Canada. 
As the adoption of tithes for this purpose was not 
considered advisable, one-seventh of all the lands of 
the province, in lieu of that ancient mode of religious 
endowment, was required to be set apart, in the 
progress of the surveys, for the maintenance of a 
" Protestant Clergy." Why the term Protestant was 
here employed, is explained by the fact that the 
tithes and endowments in the sister province existed 
entirely for the support of a Romish clergy. The 
adoption of the term Protestant in this case would 
render more clear the object and necessity of such an 
appropriation of lands for religious purposes. And if 
the term " Protestant " was liable to misconstruction, 
as seeming to comprehend other religious bodies than 
the National Church, doubt would be removed by 
the annexation of the word Clergy ; which, according 
to all existing legal usage, could only be felt to 
apply to the ministers of the Established Church of 
England. 

A question, however, did arise, founded upon the 
vague signification of the term "Protestant," as to 
the exclusive right of the Church of England to this 
religious provision ; and the dispute which grew out 
of it was only terminated in 1840, when an Act was 
passed, (3 and 4 Victoria, chap. 78,) finally disposing 
of all doubtful interpretations, and deciding that the 
terms " Protestant Clergy " might be construed to 



5 



include other ministers than those of the Church of 
England ; and assigning to the latter about one-half 
of the provision for religious instruction which here- 
tofore had been regarded as exclusively her own. 

In the progress of discussion upon this point in the 
Colonial Legislature, the proposal was occasionally 
advanced and adopted in the House of Assembly, 
that it was expedient to apply these reserved lands to 
the advancement of general education ; but this was 
a proposition uniformly rejected by the Legislative 
Council ; and, after many ineffectual attempts at a 
compromise, it was, in 1839, decided by the whole 
Provincial Legislature, that the Clergy Reserve lands 
should be re-invested in the Crown. This measure 
was founded upon the belief that a division of the 
property could be made by Parliament here with 
more prudence and justice than could be ensured 
amidst the heat and strife of local legislation. The 
Act of 1840 was the result of this reference of the 
question to the Imperial Parliament, and it was ex- 
pressly stated to be for " the final settlement of the 
question of the Clergy Reserves, the maintenance of 
religion, and the diffusion of Christian knowledge 
within that province." That it was so judged, not 
only by friends of the Church of England, but by 
many of her political opponents, is evident from the 
language of one who afterwards became most unac- 
countably the advocate of the violation of that Act of 
settlement. Mr. Price, in 1846, during a discussion 
which arose upon that subject in the Legislative 



6 



Assembly on a mere question of executive manage- 
ment, u deprecated any further legislation, as likely to 
endanger that settlement which had been considered 
final ; that peace had succeeded the long and fierce 
conflict ; that the country was settling down in the 
hope that agitation on that subject was at an end ; 
and that thus one great source of heart-burnings and 
mutual recriminations among the religious bodies 
would be at once and for ever lost in the oblivion of 
the past." The same Mr. Price, in 1850, introduced 
into the Legislative Assembly a series of resolutions, 
on which "was founded an Address to Her Majesty, 
praying for the confiscation of the Clergy Eeserves 
to secular uses ! 

If it be asked to what this extraordinary change of 
sentiment is to be attributed, the answer is ready,— 
that in new countries, if not in all countries, the 
Parliamentary aspirant cannot afford to be without 
some grave or interesting topic, by which to keep up 
the political excitement that may serve his turn 
where his abstract merits would not be discerned. 
The question of the Clergy Keserves, — with which 
there could be associated threats of a religious 
despotism on the one hand, and the charm of reli- 
gious equality on the other, — was just the one for the 
political adventurer to seize upon with avidity. And 
it is important here to state that, during the period of 
our temporary quiet from the stir and strife of the 
Reserve question, that disruption took place in the 
Church of Scotland, which ended in the formation of 



7 



a separate communion, styled the Free Church ; and 
that, however unnecessarily or unaccountably, this 
controversy in the Established Church of the neigh- 
bouring country extended to the colonies. When the 
same disruption took place in Canada, and when the 
larger body of seeeders came to regard the smaller 
body of adherents to the Scottish National Church as 
invested with a share of a public endowment, from 
which, by their separation, they voluntarily excluded 
themselves, jealousy, combined with the heat of reli- 
gious animosity, led the members of the Free Church 
to seek the overthrow of the settlement of 1840. 
Where no modification could be entertained by a 
party who professedly abjured at the outset all State 
endowments and aid, it was not unnatural that they 
should attempt the entire destruction of that provi- 
sion for religion by which their rivals were so much 
benefited. 

This was a happy opportunity for the political 
trader, who must have a capital to work upon ; and 
while the members of the Free Church of Scotland 
were engaged in hearty advocacy of the abolition of 
the Reserves as a religious endowment, it was easy 
to enlist other allies from among those who were 
lately apathetic. The ranks of that party were easily 
swelled, too, by proposing the catching lure, that the 
appropriation of these Clergy lands to ordinary edu- 
cation would serve to relieve the people from a con- 
siderable burden of taxation for the support of their 
common schools. At the same time it was becoming 



8 



usual to elect the preachers of various denominations, 
as township superintendents of schools, with a re- 
spectable salary, likely to be much augmented if the 
Clergy Reserves could be thrown into the common 
fund ; and so it was not unnatural that the alliance 
and hearty support of those should be secured in this 
agitation, who could thus transfer the revenues of the 
religious endowment into stipends, under another 
name, for themselves. 

These combined circumstances, however unjusti- 
fiably and wickedly, accumulated strength and im- 
portance to the agitation. Political capital was made 
to abound on the one hand, and the lure of interest 
acted on the other; and this, connected with the 
alarm which can be thrown into simple minds by 
re-awakening the ancient cry of danger to religious 
liberty, easily produced that amount of fierce discus- 
sion and turmoil which would warrant the Parliamen- 
tary aspirant in bringing it more formally before the 
public. 

In correspondence with this feeling — created by 
means so unprincipled and on grounds so little to be 
respected — the Address to Her Majesty to allow of 
renewed and local legislation upon the Clergy Re- 
serves was moved by Mr. Price in the Parliament of 
Canada, in the summer of 1850; professing an in- 
tention to respect the interests of present incumbents, 
but abstaining from any declared opinion as to what 
should be the ultimate disposition of that property. 
As the question now was merely whether it was ex- 



9 



pedient or not to legislate anew upon these Reserves 
in the Colony; and as many, a large body of the 
French Roman Catholic members especially, felt 
themselves under no pledge, by supporting this view, 
to vote ultimately for their alienation to secular pur- 
poses, the Address was carried. 

What followed is a matter of history so recent, 
that I need not dwell upon it further than to say, 
that Earl Grey, when Colonial Secretary, having been 
prevented, by the change of Ministry in February 
1852, from bringing in a Bill to comply with the prayer 
of the Legislative Assembly in Canada, the succeed- 
ing Government adopted — what appears to a large 
majority of sound-hearted men in the Colony the con- 
stitutional and truly British course — the resolution of 
declining to recommend to Parliament here any action 
which would allow of unrestricted or unconditional 
legislation upon the property of the Church in 
Canada. 

No body of men, in proposing the subversion of 
ancient institutions, or the alienation of property or 
privileges long in the possession of others, are so un- 
reasonable as not to offer some plea or show of right 
for the violent changes they are seeking to bring about. 
The Canadian Legislature, accordingly, goaded by 
the clamours of a party, claim the right to this local 
action from the terms of the Constitutional Act itself. 
It is contended, that as they are there invested with 
power to " vary or repeal " the provisions of that 
Act, they are only exercising a constitutional right 



10 



iii dealing absolutely with this property. That there 
is an evident misapprehension as to the meaning and 
extent of the powers thus conveyed, is proved from 
the opinion of Her Majesty's Judges themselves, who, 
on the 13th April, 1840, expressed themselves upon 
the words " vary or repeal " as follows : — 

" My Lords, — In answer to the question secondly 
put to us, we are all of opinion that the effect of the 
41st section of the statute is prospective only, and 
that the powers given to the Legislative Council and 
Assembly of either of the provinces, cannot be ex- 
tended to affect lands which have been already 
allotted and appropriated under former grants; for 
the manifest import of the 41st section appears to 
us to be limited to this, viz. 1 the varying or repeal- 
ing the provisions respecting the allotment and ap- 
propriation of lands] and not to comprehend the 
' varying or repealing allotments, or appropriations, 
which have been already* made under provisions of 
the Act, while such provisions continued unrepealed 
and in full force.' The provisions of the Statute of 
Wills might be varied or repealed without affecting 
the devises of land already made under it." In 
other words, the Provincial Parliament, by the force 
of that clause, had power to " vary " the amount of 
appropriation, from a seventh to a tenth, or a twen- 
tieth, for example; and to "repeal" the power of 
making further reservations of lands beyond what 
were already set apart for that purpose. 

Equally unfounded is the claim that the local 



11 



Legislature have a right to the disposal of the Clergy 
Reserves, as being a Colonial property. But that 
surely cannot be a Colonial property which was 
acquired originally by conquest, at the expense of 
the blood and treasure of the British Empire, and 
which was so acquired before there was a single 
Protestant inhabitant in that portion of the Colony 
in which the disputed property lies. Moreover, after 
the conquest of that Colony from the French, the 
native North American Indians were regarded to a 
certain extent as proprietors of the soil in Upper 
Canada ; and the lands considered to be rightfully 
possessed by those natives, were actually purchased 
from them by the British Government, and they are 
to this day, in part at least, being paid for by annual 
presents from the Imperial Treasury. It is most 
unreasonable, then, to affirm that the Canadian Legis- 
lature have any just control over a property acquired 
by the British Government both by conquest and 
purchase. If the right of the Colonial Legislature 
be conceded in this case, it could hardly be resisted 
if they should demand those other numerous and 
valuable portions of land throughout the province, 
which are reserved by the Crown for fortifications 
and other public purposes. These are of no incon- 
siderable value ; in many cases they are unemployed, 
and held reserved for any special object which the 
course of events may render desirable or necessary ; 
and not unfrequently the inconvenience of such reser- 
vations to local interests is complained of. 



12 



The alleged discontent that will prevail in Upper 
Canada, should the required provincial legislation 
upon the Clergy Eeserves be resisted by the Impe- 
rial Legislature, is often adduced as the strongest 
argument for their total surrender to the local autho- 
rities. This would be dangerous ground on which 
to make such a concession, as establishing a pre- 
cedent which would unsettle the title to all property 
that had originally been the grant of the Crown. 
In Lord Durham's Report, page 84, we find the fol- 
lowing on the subject of grants of lands : — 

" In Upper Canada 3,200,000 acres have been 
granted to U. E. Loyalists, being refugees from the 
United States, who settled in the Province before 
1787, and their children; 730,000 acres to militia- 
men ; 450,000 to discharged soldiers and sailors ; 
255,000 to magistrates and barristers ; 136,000 to 
executive councillors and their families; 36,000 to 
clergymen, as private property ; 264,000 to persons 
contracting to make surveys ; 92,526 to officers of 
the army and navy ; 50,000 for the endowment of 
schools ; 48,000 to Colonel Talbot ; 12,000 to the 
heirs of General Brock, and 12,000 to Dr. Mountain, 
a former Bishop of Quebec : making altogether, with 
the Reserves, nearly half of the surveyed lands of 
the Province." " Now," says a Colonial newspaper, 
" is it not strange that, while the time of the Legis- 
lature, to the value of tens of thousands of pounds, 
has been expended in fruitless legislation upon the 
Clergy Reserves, no man ventures to impeach the 



13 



titles to the extensive grants above described?" I 
shall ask whether legislation upon the one would not 
be as legal and equitable as upon the other ! 

But the discontent, so studiously set forth as 
arising from the present position of this property, 
exists only on the surface. It is limited to a few 
leading political characters, or a small number of 
agitators in the ranks of various religious denomina- 
tions ; it has not penetrated to the heart of the people, 
and has no influence upon the general quiet of the 
land. That I am correct in this affirmation, recent 
events in the history of that province serve to prove. 
Through the influence and exertions of the leading 
agitators already referred to, the last elections in 
Upper Canada were made to turn almost exclusively 
upon the Clergy Reserve question. Prior to their 
having taken place, much strong feeling was ex- 
pressed upon this subject; many public meetings 
were held by the opponents and the advocates of the 
retention of the Reserves to religious uses. The 
most unscrupulous efforts were employed to create 
impressions hostile to the Church ; all, in short, that 
could be done by agitation and misrepresentation, 
was resorted to, to secure the election of members 
who would vote away this property to secular uses. 
But what has been the result? Out of forty-two 
members (the quota of Upper Canada) elected, 
eighteen have declared themselves in favour of the 
retention of the Reserves for religious instruction by 
a recent vote; two, Sir Allan Macnab and Mr. 



14 



Illurney, decided advocates of the same view, were 
absent from that division ; and one, Mr. Prince, can 
hardly be expected to persevere in voting against his 
long-avowed principles and his uniform action in the 
previous Parliament. It must have been a question 
of detail rather than of principle which led a gentle- 
man of such strong and independent mind into this 
apparent, but let us hope temporary, contradiction. 
So that, claiming him as our ancient and always 
sturdy ally, we have the representation of Upper 
Canada equally divided on this great question. 

This is an important fact in our favour; but it 
grows in importance when we compare the present 
with the last Parliament, upon this question. Now 
we have twenty-one (twenty certainly) in favour of 
holding the Clergy Reserves for religious uses ; then 
we had but seventeen entertaining that view out of 
the representatives of Upper Canada; in other 
words, the Conservative religious party gained nine 
seats in Upper Canada at the last general election, 
and lost but five. Of these five, the constituencies 
of two — Cornwall and Niagara — are believed to be 
decidedly in favour of the maintenance of the Clergy 
Reserves ; the seats were lost on personal grounds, 
or those of local interest only. And this was the 
result, it should be remembered, after the exercise 
of the most steady, strenuous, and unprincipled 
exertions on the part of our opponents. 

In contemplating this result, there is a special 
feature, bearing upon the whole question, of which 



15 



we ought not to lose sight. Mr. Price, the leading 
advocate in the last Parliament for the secularization 
of the Clergy Reserves, lost his seat in the Second 
Riding of York, and is succeeded by Mr. Gamble, 
a Conservative Churchman, Mr. Notman, among 
the foremost and most talented in opposition to the 
claims of the Church, is displaced from Middlesex 
by Mr. Willson, another Conservative Churchman. 
Mr. Morrison, one of the leading debaters against the 
Reserves as a religious endowment, gives place to 
Mr. Wright, a Churchman, in the First Riding of 
York. Mr. Maefarlane, conspicuous for his animosity 
to the Reserves as a religious endowment, is rejected 
in the county of Welland, and Mr. Street, a zealous 
Churchman, is elected in his room. So that four 
gentlemen, in the most populous constituencies of the 
province, who had taken the most prominent part in 
seeking to despoil the Church, were beaten by their 
opponents ; and what is, perhaps, more significant, 
Mr. Price, in taking leave of his constituents, dis- 
tinctly declared that, in rejecting him and electing 
Mr. Gamble, they had given their verdict against the 
secularization of the Clergy Reserves. 

But I am enabled to adduce another test of this 
improved feeling on the question of the Clergy 
Reserves. The Toronto Patriot, one of the oldest 
and most respectable journals in Upper Canada, has 
furnished us with a tabular statement, from which it 
appears that the population of those places in which 
the Conservative religious party have gained seats 



16 



amounts to 196,277 ; while the population of those 
which our opponents have gained amounts only to 
55,482. Again, the same journal shows that the 
whole number of votes given to the Conservative 
religious party at the last elections in Upper Canada 
was 24,048, while those given to their opponents was 
only 23,550. Furthermore, on the showing of that 
paper, the whole population (adopting the census as 
then published) represented by the Conservative 
party amounts to 409,037, while that represented 
by their opponents is only 384,059. 

By the last census, the members of the Church of 
England in Upper Canada number 223,928, and 
those of the Church of Scotland, 57,713 ; both having 
a defined and vested right in the property of the 
Clergy Reserves. Moreover, grants have been an- 
nually made from the proceeds of these Reserves to 
Ministers of the United Synod of the Presbyterian 
Church in Upper Canada, and to Wesleyan Metho- 
dists : a presumption that these bodies are not at 
least universally in favour of the alienation of the 
Eeserves from religious purposes. So that, if to 
the combined numbers of the Churches of England 
and Scotland, amounting to 281,641, we add the 
adherents of those other religious bodies who are 
benefiting by this endowment, we shall hardly allow 
ourselves to say that a majority of the Protestant 
population of Upper Canada — amounting in all to 
784,573 — are opposed to the maintenance of the 
Clergy Eeserves for religious objects. Some of them 



17 



may be discontented with the existing distribution of 
the revenue accruing from the lands ; but the facts 
I have adduced prove that they are not opposed to 
the principle of holding them as a religious en- 
dowment. 

But, leaving out of the question the rights and 
claims of other religious bodies, I trust I have ad- 
vanced enough to substantiate the justice and equity 
of preserving to the Church of England her share in 
this property, formally allotted to her by the Act of 
Parliament of 1840. 

She has in her favour the Constitutional Act of 
1791, first making the reservation for the support of 
her Clergy ; and which, it has been demonstrated, 
the Colonial Legislature has no power whatever to 
alter as respects the reservations already made. She 
has the Act of 1840 (3 and 4 Victoria, chap. 78), 
adjudicating a disputed point as to the extent of her 
claims under the Constitutional Act, and making 
that settlement " final." 

She has virtual possession of the revenue derived 
from her share of the Reserves secured by this set- 
tlement, and she is actually employing it for the 
support of her Clergy. 

In the name of common justice, then, how can she 
be deprived of this property ? 

And opposed to this law and justice, let us hear 
the wretched appeals on the other side. It has been 
argued that the lands thus reserved obstruct the 
course of public improvement. That cannot be the 

B 



18 



case now, .because they are all being sold, and they 
are rapidly falling into the hands of individuals for 
actual settlement. 

State endowments of religion, it is contended, by 
securing a too great independence of the Clergy, 
endanger the purity of religion. But not so with 
the Clergy Reserves ; since it has been shown by the 
Inspector-General, Mr. Hincks himself, that the 
share of the Church of England in Upper Canada 
can never exceed 20,000/. sterling per annum ; and 
by existing regulations, no stipend exceeding 100Z. 
currency per annum can be allotted to any individual 
Clergyman from that source. 

They will, some argue, lighten the taxes of the 
people, if they should be appropriated to ordinary 
education. But not so, unless the affirmation be 
hypocritical and a mockery, that they who contend 
for the abolition of all endowments of religion are 
ready to give freely, by voluntary contributions, for 
the service of religion. What would be saved in 
this last case, by the application in its stead of a 
public endowment, let them appropriate to secular 
education. It would be a prudent shifting of the 
voluntary burden, — the fixed income to religion, and 
the voluntary one to education ; the fixed income for 
that which men have no natural taste for supporting, 
the voluntary one for that which worldly and per- 
sonal considerations would impel them to uphold. 
There would manifestly be kindness, as well as 
wisdom, in securing this transition for them. 



i 



19 



Again, we are told, the maintenance of religion 
is secure without the aid or application of a special 
endowment ; but the case or history of no nation can 
be adduced in which that rash assertion is proved. 
The experiment, wherever it has been tried, has 
emphatically failed. Such a land has either been 
overrun with infidelity, or the pure image of Chris- 
tianity, amidst conflicting and extravagant forms of 
error, has been well-nigh lost. All history attests 
the necessity of supplying, from compulsory or inde- 
pendent sources, what the natural depravity of man 
is averse to. 

And how would the spoliation contemplated in 
the application of the Clergy Keserves to secular 
education, contrast with precedents furnished by the 
dealing of the Government of the United States with 
a similar property ? The endowments of Trinity 
Church, in New York, their origin and value, are well 
known. They were the gift of a British Sovereign 
to the Church of England in that country, and their 
estimated value is now 3,000,000 of dollars. The 
annual revenue from this endowment, at the legal 
rate of interest in that country, is nearly double of 
what can ever be derived from the share of the 
Clergy Keserves held by the Church of England in 
Upper Canada. Attempts, from time to time, have 
been made to divest Trinity Church of that endow- 
ment ; but all have failed, and she is now secure in its 
possession. Again, in the State of Vermont, there 
were Glebe Lands held, for a long term of years, by 



20 



the Church ; which, in 1805, the Legislature of that 
State passed an Act to appropriate to the support of 
Schools. In 1819 a suit was brought, in the Circuit 
Court of the United States, for the recovery of these 
lands : it was decided in favour of the plaintiffs ; and, 
in March 1823, the judgment was affirmed in the 
Supreme Court at Washington, by the opinion of six 
judges, against one dissenting. 

If, in defiance of law and justice, and in contra- 
vention of all precedents, the Church of England in 
Canada is to be deprived of her unquestionable 
rights, what ecclesiastical property in the empire is 
anywhere safe? Should her revenues be sacrificed 
in Canada, because a real or presumed majority 
demand it, can they, with the same weight of argu- 
ment and high moral influence, be preserved in 
Ireland ? And if, in one dependency of the empire 
after another, they be given up to a causeless and 
unjustifiable clamour, how long shall the same con- 
cession be withheld in England? Cut away the 
power and vitality of the extremities, and will the 
heart be safe ? 

But, speaking of agitation, it would not be quelled 
in Canada by the mere sacrifice of the Clergy He- 
serves as a religious endowment. If a public property 
for the support of religion in Upper Canada be swept 
away, the rich endowments of the Romish Church in 
Lower Canada cannot long be preserved. It is need- 
less to speak vaguely and abstractedly, as some 
choose to do, of the difference of the tenure by which 



21 



they are respectively held. The gift of a British 
king is as binding in the eye of law and conscience 
as the bequest of a French monarch ; the endowment 
solemnly guaranteed by Act of Parliament is as 
strongly guarded by right and equity as the bequest 
of individuals, or the gift of corporations. And if 
the argument gain respect, that Protestant endow- 
ments endanger the purity of religion, as securing 
too much independence on the part of the Clergy, it 
must be even stronger to prove that Romish endow- 
ments — especially if there be no counterpoise from 
Protestant ecclesiastical property — involve a greater 
peril, not only to spiritual purity, but to religious 
liberty. 

The very principle upon which the advocates of 
the secularization of the Clergy Reserves proceed, 
will, sooner or later, drive them into this view of 
the case. They will be compelled, by the strong 
clamour to which themselves have given impulse, to 
be consistent in their plunder. They will be con- 
strained to this, because the despoiled Protestants, 
already in the United Provinces exceeding the whole 
amount of Roman Catholics, cannot be expected to 
look with complacency upon the large and untouched 
possessions of the Romish hierarchy. 

Nor will this feeling be slightly aggravated by the 
action of Roman Catholic members in bringing about 
such an issue of the controversy. In October last, 
the resolutions of Mr. Hincks, demanding unre- 
stricted legislation upon the Clergy Reserves by the 



22 



Canadian Parliament, were — at the proposal of the 
first amendment — supported by seventeen members 
from Upper Canada, and twenty from Lower Canada; 
including in the latter eighteen of the Roman Catholic 
persuasion. They were opposed by eighteen members 
from Upper Canada, and four from Lower Canada; 
including, in the latter, two Roman Catholic members. 
If, then, on this division, the Roman Catholic mem- 
bers on both sides had abstained from voting, — as 
they should have done in a question of Protestant 
Church property, — the vote would have been nineteen 
to twenty, or a majority of one against Mr. Hincks's 
resolutions. 

Again, it should be recollected that a special indul- 
gence — steadily denied to the Church of England — 
has been conceded to the Romish Church in Canada, 
in allowing them, under the Education Law, separate 
schools for the instruction of the children of their 
own creed. Should the Clergy Reserves, then, be 
forfeited for purposes of ordinary education, they 
would, as respects the Roman Catholics in Canada, 
go almost directly to the propagation of their religion. 
A share of the revenue of that property would be 
received for their separate schools ; and these separate 
schools are under the control of their Church, and 
directed by their priests. 

Either, then, leave the Protestant endowments to 
their original application, or sweep away every vestige 
of ecclesiastical property from every quarter of the 
United Provinces ; for if this equal justice be denied, 



23 



the province will take the exacting of it — with all 
the sad results of a war of religious parties — into 
their own hands, much sooner than the threat of col- 
lision will be realized should the Imperial Govern- 
ment not concede to the mixed Canadian Legislature 
the right of sequestrating the Protestant Clergy 
Reserves. 

I trust I have said enough to show, that the 
declaration should be maintained by Her Majesty's 
Government, put forth some months ago by the 
Right Hon. Secretary of State for the Colonies, 
that they are " unwilling to give their consent and 
support to an arrangement, the result of which would 
too probably be the diversion to other purposes of the 
only public fund, except that devoted to the endow- 
ment of the Roman Catholic Church, which now 
exists for the support of divine worship and reli- 
gious instruction in the Colony." 

While this declaration has given great joy to many 
thousands of loyal subjects in Upper Canada, — com- 
prised in the ranks of other religious denominations, 
as well as of the Churches of England and Scotland, 
— it cannot be a ground of real complaint with any. 
The people of that province are comparatively young 
in their freedom, and they have the exuberance of 
youth in the manifestations of their constitutional 
liberty. But, while loyal to this Crown and Empire, 
they are loyal also to the obligations of religion, 
order, and justice. No public sentiment will ever 
sanction an interference with Royal privilege, or the 



24 



clearly defined claims of the Parliament of this 
kingdom ; no public opinion there will uphold the 
spoliation of rightful proprietors, whether they be 
corporate bodies or individuals. The vast majority 
of the people, too, are desirous of the permanent 
ministrations of religion ; and while a few may be 
chimerical in their enthusiasm upon that point, the 
great bulk of the population are practically aware of 
the ineffectual workings of the voluntary system, and 
are desirous that there should be blended with the 
partial dependence of their ministers upon the offer- 
ings of their flocks, their independence of that popular 
control which would mar the honesty of their reli- 
gious teaching, and render them the tools of men 
rather than the servants of God. 



R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. 



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